SOMETIMES IT IS SO EASY, WE SHARE A PILLOW

It is only four
degrees outside.
We lie together
flank to flank
no covers
no clothes
--
shimmering.

MONDAY EVENING, OAK PARK YMCA

I see again a trickle
of men emerging
from the peewee-sized doors
of the racquetball courts

wearing their Jim McMahon
sweatbands and knee-braces

perspiration clinging
to each wrinkle
and kinked body hair
like overcooked pasta.

I want to high-five them all.

my new nickname

so, LOST nerd that i am, i subscribe to LOST blogs...and learned by way of this LOST nerd pony express that ABC has posted a Sawyer nickname generator.

i encourage you to try it out--much more fun than "how will i die", "what's my porn star name", etc.

check it out here.

for the record, my nickname is...

Picasso.

post yours below, fellow LOST nerds and folks looking for something to postpone the laundry/work phone calls etc.

but then again, i voted to go topless...

but then again, i voted to go topless... thanks to tim c. for calling attention to brandon's concise, truthful and witty take on the Super Tuesday voting:

The color of the tee shirt doesn't matter. Nor does the sex of the tee shirt. But would you choose to wear only two tee shirts (read: Bush and Clinton), alternating one and then the other, for over twenty years without once stopping to get a whiff of how funky you smell and how tacky you look? It's Super Tuesday and it's time to buy a new tee shirt (read: Obama, American Apparel). Stop wearing the same shitty clothes, America.

For the record, I voted Ron Paul in Michigan's primary, which I suppose is something like anarchy (who knew being a strict interpreter of the Constitution would one day feel like anarchy?) which in this case/this metaphor would be like going topless.

ann coulter...attempting some karl rove-type sabotage?

it is well-known that karl rove essentially "propped" john kerry's bid for the presidency up in 2004 by issuing several statements during the primaries noting kerry was a formidable candidate, had him worried, etc., in order to use his reverse psychology skills to lull us all into think kerry was our man. of course, kerry never had rove worried (aside: why the hell didn't anyone catch on to this? never take karl rove's word! he's like ben from LOST). in fact, rove had the best attack plan on kerry (flip-flop) and obviously, it worked.

the same rumblings have begun this campaign year--rove more or less offering advice to hillary clinton, deriding obama, etc. and why? well, if you're rove, and you're a brilliant campaign tactician, highly skilled in election espionage, hillary is the candidate you want to see make it through the primary. (makes the new york times' recent hillary endorsement even more interesting).

nothing, absolutely nothing, motivates the conservative base like mentioning the clinton name. obama, however, is a more nebulous and enigmatic threat. it is difficult to say anything negative about him that sticks. just look at the clinton campaign's mud-slinging attempts: he's a radical muslim? he owned rental properties in illinois? he was a drug-dealer?

straight from the celluloid snapshots of the movie "8 mile", obama has already released the most explosive information any opponent could hope to unleash. we know he struggled with a drug addiction--he wrote about it. in a book! the clinton campaign now looks like rabbit's opposing emcee at the end of the film--nothing to say, dumbfounded.

which brings me to this: ann coulter says she'd vote for hillary clinton over john mccain, and here's why:

"If you are looking at substance rather than if there is an R or a D
after his name, manifestly, if he's our candidate, than Hillary is
going to be our girl, because she's more conservative than he is,"
Coulter said. "I think she would be stronger on the war on terrorism."

what? is there anyone alive who thinks of hillary clinton as even remotely conservative? she is certainly not a fiscal conservative. (outside ron paul, i don't think there is one.) the health care plan she pushed during bill's white house years smacks of progressive/liberal ideals. giving licenses to illegal immigrants, etc.,--none of this is conservative canon. wanting to pull the US out of Iraq is certainly not part of the conservative agenda.

make no mistake, i haven't been a john mccain fan since he decided to rejoin the dark side and become another lemur for the bush administration. but within the framework of the current conservative agenda and canon, coulter's assessment makes zero sense.

the only explanation, as far as i am concerned, is that coulter is carrying rove's playbook: she thinks marshaling support against hillary would be a slam dunk. i'm afraid she's right, and i hope this time, the rest of the dems are smart enough to see it.

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not for the faint of heart

CNN, the venerable leader of all news media outlets, has posted a story about (shock!) animals being mistreated at a slaughterhouse. As if slaughter weren't mistreatment enough, right?

Anyway, fair warning. Here's what the tape (whih I am too faint-of-heart to watch) shows:

The video shows Hallmark Meat Packing Co. workers administering repeated electric shocks to downed cows -- animals that are too sick, weak or otherwise unable to stand on their own. Workers are seen kicking cows, jabbing them near their eyes, ramming them with a forklift and shooting high-intensity water up their noses in an effort to force them to their feet for slaughter.

Can you imagine? Stand up, lazy sick cow, so we can eviscerate you! Not to mention (as the article does) the implications for the quality and heathfulness of the meat. Reason number ten million why I am not eating meat--I can't guarantee the sanitation, contamination risk, etc. And lord knows we can't trust the government to keep an effective watch, either. Scary!

This isn't intended as a vegetarian polemic, either. I hate those people. But I think we should all really investigate where our food comes from, and how it is prepared, etc. I have a sneaking suspicion that many of the modern-day ills this country is afflicted with start with our food sources (ancient Rome, anyone?) and if we all pay a little more attention, we can root some of them out.

thinking of marquez instead of finishing the book

i have almost finished reading "love in the time of cholera". i tore through "100 years of solitude" this summer, and upon finishing it, told jeremy, "that's the best book i am ever going to read. i should just stop now." i mention all this for a few reasons: i have been 30 pages from the end of "cholera" for a nearly a week, and yet i can't bring myself to finish it. there sort of spell marquez's work exists in--well, it is difficult to leave it! and also, the prevailing opinion (even among people i respect and adore) is that "cholera" is essentially worthless in comparison to "solitude".

i'll grant the books are substantially different--"cholera" is all about love, the thousands of types of love, the past, time, how we change and who we become (as though we are all always living with the ghosts of who we were or who someone else was...you have to read this book!). and "solitude" is more perfectly executed as a masterful plot. but i suspect that as people with two children say you don't love one more, you love them both differently, that should be the feeling with these two novels.

it's just that "solitude" is like the peyton manning, and "cholera" is the eli manning.

but guess what? peyton won his superbowl, and now eli is going too!